nangas.com

And no, I don’t mean Nicole Kidman’s baby… I mean a Lavington Style Sunday Roast…

A light blue station wagon was found ablaze in the park between Boomerang Drive and Dale Crescent early on the morning of Sunday 27^th July 2008.

Nangas.com has stepped their journalistic integrity up a notch to bring you this story… we were even able to get some eyewitness accounts this time (rather than merely quoting other media sources). Acting on a tip off, a staff photographer attended and took the following pictures of the crimescene at about 11.30 am, when the odour of burnt rubber and plastic was still hanging thickly in the atmosphere like a London pea-souper…

A local resident, Mr X, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution, told Nangas.com that he was awoken about 7.00 am by some very audible noise, which he initially thought was the sound of bricks being thrown through a car windscreen. He jumped out of bed and ran outside to investigate, hoping to foil the responsible nangas [I can’t believe I just typed that one] before more damage was inflicted.

“I saw all the smoke in the direction of the park but thought it was a house fire because of the smell and amount of smoke. I grabbed my mobile phone and, as I was dialing, I realised that it was actually a car on fire in the park – a light blue station wagon.

It was really quite scary as the flames were by this stage about 60 feet in the air and I thought that if the fire brigade doesn’t get here soon, some nearby houses might go up, as there are a lot of gum trees in the park. There were a few explosions and it took the firemen about 10 minutes to put the blaze out as it kept flaring up again.”

All a pretty stock standard report of a burning car you might think, but Mr X continued “You know what the most alarming part was in all this? The bloody dog didn’t bark the whole time, even though the car was only about 20 metres from the back fence. He didn’t bark when the ferals dumped the car and he didn’t even bark when the firemen showed up to put it out! He’s usually such a good guard dog, but this type of stuff has become so frequent here, I guess he didn’t think it was close enough to warrant a reaction.”

Well, hasn’t Boomerang Drive become Australia’s answer to the Chatswood Estate.

Mr X also informed Nangas.com that he had heard squealing tyres and reving sounds of a probably-stolen car hooning around the nearby streets much earlier in the morning. I asked Mr X why he didn’t report this to the police at the time and his response was “This happens nearly every week. Unless you can give the police very specific information about where you think the car is, there’s not much they can do about it as the car is usually long gone by the time the police show up – if they show up. There are not enough police to handle the crime in this town and on a Saturday night they are usually too busy with stabbings and street fights and stuff in Dean Street to attend to stuff like joy riders. It’s a waste of time reporting it unless you actually have some solid information to report.”

I guess we’re all just going to have to accept that burning cars are now a premanent part of our physical and cultural landscape, whether we like it or not.